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THE LEGISLATIVE CAREER 



OF 



Justin S. Morrill 




^A^ ADDRESS 

Delivered at New Haven, Connecticul, November 14, 1900, at the request 

of the Executive Committee of the American Association of 

Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations 



By GEORGE W. ATHERTON, LL.D. 

President of The Pennsylvania State College 



l> 



o 
ri- 



ch 

^ THE LEGISLATIVE CAREER 



OF 



JUSTIN S. MORRILL 



THE CAREER OF JUSTIN S. MORRILL is a conspic- 
uous and brilliant illustration of the training power 
of free institutions. 

He belonged to the "plain people." He was the son and 
gi-andson of a village blacksmith: at his death there were 
gathered to do him honor the President of the United States 
and his Cabinet, the Supreme Court of the United States, 
the General of the Army and his staff, the Diplomatic rep- 
resentatives of foreign countries, Senators, Representatives, 
ofiBcials of every grade, and men and women of every 
station in life. And the gathering was not a perfunctory 
meeting of routine and formal officialism; it was a great 
assembly of those who had known and loved and honored 
the man, and to very many of whom his death brought a 
deep sense of personal bereavement. The flowers that 
covered his bier were the offerings of unaffected love. The 
tears that were shed fell warm from the heart. 

The causes of this wide contrast between the lowly 
beginning and the stately ending this sketch will try 
to show. 



Justin Smith Mokrill was born in Strafford, Vermont, 
April 14, 1810. He was the eldest in a family of ten chil- 
dren, and was early inured to habits of industry and thrift. 
His grandfather, in 1795, was among the hardy and aggres- 
sive settlers who followed close in the wake of that earlier 
generation of pioneers who wrested the little state of Ver- 
mont from between the conflicting claims of New York on 
the one side and New Hampshire on the other. These 
pioneers, occupants of a nondescript territory — neither 
colony, province, state nor nation — had imbibed the spirit 
of the thirteen colonies, and had borne their full share in 
the perils and triumphs of the Revolution, declaring them- 
selves, January 16, 1777, a free and independent state. 
They had no representation in the Convention of 1787 that 
framed the Constitution of the United States, but after- 
wards adopted it and were admitted into the Union in 1791, 
— being the first addition to the original thirteen states, 
under the new Constitution. 

The grandfather (Smith Morrill), with his wife, five 
sons and two daughters, joined in the new movement of 
population that had been stimulated by the admission of 
Vermont, and moved from Massachusetts into the north- 
eastern section of the state, settling in what is now known 
as Oi'ange county. The five sons settled in Strafford,— a 
part of them in what was known as the Upper Village and 
the rest in the Lower Village; Nathaniel, the father of 
Justin S., being among the former. One note of the thrift 
and sagacity of this family group is found in the fact that, 
besides carrying on the ordinary trade of blacksmithing 



■with its one man, hammer, forge, and anvil, they made use 
of a swift mountain stream that ran through the two vil- 
lages, to drive in each a trip-hammer, and thus established 
in that rural community one of the beginnings of iron man- 
ufacture in this country, turning out for the use of farmers 
in the vicinity such rude implements as the simple needs of 
the time required. 

Justin S. lived in his father's home the ordinary life of a 
country boy, with such sparse privileges as country boys 
then had, picking up what fragments of knowledge he 
could in the district school. This was supplemented by two 
terms at Thetford Academy, one of those institutions which 
did so much during the first half of the present century 
to deepen the foundations of a solid education, and a few 
of which seem to have tasted the fountain of immortal 
youth. His school education ended when he was fourteen 
years of age. His services were needed to help support the 
growing family, and he was hired out to work in a store in 
the village, at a salary of $30 for the first year and $40 for 
the second. On the completion of the contract, he engaged 
in a similar service in Portland, Me., where he remained 
four years. At the end of that time his former employer in 
his native village (Judge Harris) made him a partner. Judge 
Harris furnishing the capital and young ]\Iorrill managing 
the business. After about fifteen years of active and suc- 
cessful business, he was able to retire with a modest but 
suiEcient fortune, purchased a tract of land abutting on the 
village street, cultivated and improved it as a farm, erected 
a house, married a wife, and settled himself, to all appear- 
ances, as a quiet, unostentatious, retired business man, who 
could afford to spend the remainder of his life in tiie undis- 
turbed enjoyment of such simple and wholesome^ pursuits 
and pleasures as his fancy might select. 

His career seemed thus to be practically completed. He 
had succeeded at an early ago in roacliiTig a position which 
most men expect to reach, if at all, at the end of a nuich 
longer and severer period of toil. We do not find that his 



success awakened the slightest trace of envy in any mind. 
His courtesy in dealing with customers, his absolute and 
unvarying integrity, his gentle helpfulness toward the lowly 
and the less fortunate, his genial sunniness of temper, his 
watchful and intelligent study of the needs of the community 
and his foresight in anticipating them had won for him a 
unique place among his neighbors; so that, while he was 
little known beyond the borders of his own county, he there 
easily took first rank among the most respected and honored 
citizens. 

What seemed the close of a career was only its begin- 
ning. He had not yet erected a monument ; he had simply 
laid the foundation, broad and deep and secure, as a pedes- 
tal on which the finished statue of his career was to stand. 
In 1854, the representative from his congressional district 
declined a reelection, and Mr. Morrill was brought forward 
as a candidate by his neighbors of Orange county. He was, 
as I have said, practically unknown to the district. His im- 
mediate predecessors had been among the ablest and most 
eminent public men of a state whose annals are crowded ^vith 
great names, one of them being that Jacob Collamer, who 
afterwards represented Vermont in the United States Senate, 
and who has been selected to stand side by side with Ethan 
Allen as a representative of Vermont, in Statuary Hall at 
Washington. It is not surprising that other counties of the 
disti'ict should have looked with some distrust upon this new 
man, and that a bolting candidate in his own party should 
draw off a considerable number of votes (2,473) . This, at a 
time when political parties were somewhat more evenly di- 
vided in Vei'mont than in recent years, proved to be a serious 
matter, and Mr. Morrill was elected by a majority of onlj' 
fifty -nine votes. It is startling to think what momentous 
possibilities were carried by those fifty-nine votes. The laws 
of Vermont then requii-ed a majority of all votes cast to 
elect, and a change of only thirty votes out of 16,701 in a 
rural congressional district, removed almost outside of the 
^eat currents of public life ami opinion, might not only 



have changed forever the cai'eer of a single man, but, as we 
now see, would have checked or turned aside a great stream 
of constructive influences, the importance and eflSciency of 
which it is altogether impossible to compute. I am not 
of those who would attach too great importance to the in- 
fluence of single minds. There is a half truth in the saying 
of Emerson to the effect that the history of the world resolves 
itself into the biographies of a few strong characters ; but that 
is largely, as I think, because such characters represent and 
interpret rather than create the periods in which they live. 
The greater truth is that expressed by Tennyson: 

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." 

The great streams of human destiny flow on, not ordered 
by a blind fate, but by that gi-eat constructive Intelligence 
which rules from everlasting to everlasting. In one view, a 
man or a race seems but of slight account in the midst of 
these irresistible, all -compelling, cosmic forces. But, on 
the other hand, they often color the stream or change its 
direction, and, while each group or race must be swept on 
by forces mightier than itself, it is also true that each is so 
organized within itself that its final contribution to the sum 
total of human progress is largely summed up and expressed 
in some one generation or individual. As Lowell says: 

"All thoughts that move the world begin 
Deep down within the primitive soul; 
And from the many slowly upward win 
To one who grasps the whole." 

That "one" may be a Julius CiEsar, or a Charlemagne, or a 
Frederick the Great, or a Hildebrand, or a Savonarola, or 
a Luther, or a Cromwell, or a "Washington, or a Lincoln. 
Every such man is the embodiment and representative of 
the life of his era, and the loss or misplacement of that one 
may involve, therefore, the loss or misplacement of a whole 
historical epoch. Mr. Morrill, in his measure, was such 
a man. 



lu December, 1855, he began what proved to be the long- 
est and, as I am inclined to believe, one of the most fruitful 
legislative careers thus far recorded in our congressional 
history. Certain it is that most of the important legisla- 
tion of Congress during his long service felt the impress 
of Mr. Morrill's mind, and much of it took its final form 
under the influence of his judgment. The bolting candidate 
of 1854 never reappeared, and had no successor. Mr. 
Morrill was sent to the House for a period of twelve suc- 
cessive years, with majorities ranging from 6,573 to 9,337, 
and then, in 1867, transferred to the Senate, where he served 
continuously thirty-two years, making an unbroken record 
of forty-four years, on the shining rolls of which there is 
no mar or stain. I ventui-e to say that no man ever ap- 
proached him or, after looking into that noble face, thought 
him api^roachable with a proposal to do an act that was 
not scrupulously honorable. During the course of this long 
career, Mr. Morrill is said to have made not less than one 
hundred set speeches, and, according to a statement which 
Dr. True, of the Office of Experiment Stations, was kind 
enough to have prepared for me, his name appears in the 
record of proceedings no fewer than 2,477 times as intro- 
ducing bills, petitions and resolutions, making remarks or 
speeches on pending questions, and intervening with sug- 
gestions or motions for the orderly conduct of business. 
He early showed a remarkable aptitude for the details of 
parliamentary procedure, and was soon recognized as pecu- 
liarly fitted to report important measures and take charge 
of them on the floor of the House. The clearness and 
simplicity of his expositions, his remarkable grasp of 
details, as well as of broad, general principles, and his 
unfailing courtesy toward opponents, coupled with un- 
yielding firmness in maintaining the rights of himself or 
his committee, made him remarkably successful in guiding 
a piece of projected legislation through the confused tan- 
gle of a running debate. Although he spoke so frequently, 
he is seldom, if ever, found repeating himself, and the 



range of subjects to which he gave iutelligent attention, 
and to the discussion of which he contributed either opin- 
ions or facts, fills one with constant suri^rise. The wonder 
is, how any man could speak so frequently in the course of 
running debates, and on so wide a range of topics, without 
dropping into the merest commonplace. 

In the second session of the 37th Congi-ess, for instance, 
in which he introduced his second Land Gi'ant Bill, he is 
recorded as having made remarks on the appointment of 
collectors of the income tax, on the payment of bounty to 
soldiers, on tea and sugar duties, on the direct tax, on the 
Post Office Appropriation Bill, on the Diplomatic Bill, the 
Homestead Bill, the Fortification Bill, the Treasury Note 
Bill and the Tariff Bill, on the Illinois Ship Canal, the 
financial policy of the government, the Naval Appropria- 
tion Bill, the claims for losses by the Rebellion, on print- 
ing the Patent Ofiice Report, on Confiscation, on the Vol- 
unteers' Bounty Bill, on a case of alleged drunkenness in 
the army, on the Pacific Railroad Bill, the Army Deficiency 
Bill, the Tax Bill, the Army Appropriation Bill, the News- 
paper Postage Bill, the Legislative Bill, the Civil Bill, and 
on the donation of land for a navy yard. In addition to 
this, he made a set speech in opposition to the Treasury 
Note Bill, and presented amendments to the Anti- Polygamy 
Bill, which he was the first to introduce into Congi-ess. 

There could be no more striking evidence of the breadth 
and versatility and accuracy of his knowledge, as well as 
the steadiness and alertness of his mental processes. His 
mind seemed to work with the regularity and ease of a 
finely organized machine, the motive power of which was a 
well-considered and tenacious purpose. He gave to his 
duties the same clear and placid intelligence, the same 
alertness of mind, the same absolute integrity, the same 
consideration for the opinions and prejudices of others, the 
same knowledge of the deeper forces of human nature, and 
the same high ideals that had shaped his earlier career ; and 
all these qualities were enlarged and illumined in the light of 



a wider range of vision which his higher position gave. In 
the committee room, on the floor of either House, in his 
intercourse with his fellow -members, in his relations to the 
great departments of the Government, in his constant cul- 
tivation of the gentle amenities of social and friendly inter- 
course, he knew but one thing — to obey the dictates of his 
own crystal conscience and to serve his fellowmen. Horace 
foresaw him: "Integer vitae, scelerisque purus." He was 
one of those finely balanced characters that almost elude 
analysis. His excellences were so uniformly diffused 
through the whole man that no one seemed especially to 
predominate. He was equally the philosopher and the man 
of action. Holding his own deep religious convictions with 
quiet but unwavering firmness, he had no word or thought 
of uncharitableness for those who held other views. A 
strong and uncompromising party man on general princi- 
ples, he did not hesitate to speak and vote against his 
party when he believed it to be in the wrong. Mere 
majorities had no meaning for him, except as they accorded 
■with his own convictions of truth and duty. Without a 
trace of asceticism, he always gave the impression of one 
who walked by an inner light and drew the inspiration of 
his life from unseen and immortal springs. He was a man 
among men: in the world, but not of it. 

Aside from the comparatively fleeting memory of his 
fine personality, his permanent fame will be identified with 
three great measures, or groups of measures, either one of 
which would have been sufficient to give him a lasting 
place among the constructive statesmen of the Republic. 
These measures are: 

1. The Tariff Law of 1861, with its later modifications, 
and the complementary system of internal revenue. 

2. Measures for the construction or modification of pub- 
lic buildings. 

3. The Land Grant Act of 1862 for educational pur- 
poses, and the later supplementary legislation. 



No account of the Tariff Act of 1861 would be adequate 
without a general review of the financial and industrial 
condition of the country during the previous twelve or fif- 
teen years, as affected by the Tariff Acts of 1846 and 1857, 
the discoveries of gold in California and Australia, the 
movement of population that immediately set in towards 
the gold fields, the filling up of the West, partly occa- 
sioning and partly occasioned by the Kansas -Nebraska 
legislation of 1854 and subsequently, and the great financial 
crash of 1857, following which the credit of the United 
States was so low that the Government was compelled to 
sell a 6 per cent, gold bond at 89 tV cents on the dollar. 
It should be added, however, that this great depression of 
credit was partly occasioned by the political disturbances 
preceding and following the presidential election of 1860, 
since the permanent debt of the United States (at that 
time $45,000,000, bearing 5 per cent, interest) stood at a 
premium of 3 per cent in the market. 

Mr. Morrill's first tariff measure had for its object to 
strengthen the credit of the Government, to provide for the 
payment of a floating debt in the form of outstanding 
treasury notes, and to raise the amount of revenue required 
for the ordinary needs of the Government and for the pay- 
ment of interest on its bonded debt. The emergency was 
so pressing and so generally recognized that the measiu'e 
passed both houses and was signed by President Buchanan 
only two days before the close of his administration. This 
Tariff Act was drawn on distinctively protective lines, and 
introduced for the first time into our tariff legislation the 
principle of applying specific and ad valorem duties, in 
certain cases, to the same articles; thereby creating, on the 
one hand, a partial set-off against possible undervaluation, 
and avoiding, on the other hand, the injustice of placing 
the same amount of tax on different grades of articles of 
the same name. 

Wliatever academic objection may be raised against the 
system of which Mr. Morrill thus became the sponsor. 



and whatever practical defects may be from time to time 
discovered in its working, it is only a bare statement of 
fact to say that it has on the whole been sustained by 
the judgment of the country as represented in Congress 
during the forty years that have followed it — with the 
single brief break made by the Wilson measure (1893- 
97) — and has accomplished far more than its most san- 
guine friends anticipated. This measure, with its subse- 
quent modifications, was the backbone of a financial system 
which enabled the Government to carry on the most costly 
and destructive war of modern times, and, after the extra- 
ordinary expenses of the war had ceased, provided means 
for paying off $100,000,000 of debt per annum for several 
successive years; so strengthened the public credit that 
bonds of the United States bearing only 2 and 3 per 
cent, interest now stand at a premium in the market; in- 
creased the wealth of the country from $16,000,000,000, in 
1860, to $90,000,000,000, in 1900; made us, in addition to 
being the gi'eatest agricultural nation in the world, the great- 
est manufacturing nation, increasing our annual exports 
of manufactured products from a few millions to nearly 
five hundred millions; enabled us to equip European rail- 
ways with American locomotives, to build battleships for 
Russia and underground electric railways for London, to 
erect steel bridges in Central Africa, to lay down steel rails 
in Russia, Australia and Java, and to take up government 
loans for Germany, Russia, and Great Britain. It is a sys- 
tem under which the center of gi-avity of the financial world 
seems slowly but surely shifting from London to New York, 
to rest at last in Chicago or San Francisco. These are the 
stupendous and controlling facts. Mr. Morrill neither de- 
vised nor foresaw the whole, and it would be idle folly to 
attribute these results wholly to the legislation that he pro- 
moted, or to any other single cause; but one of his endur- 
ing memorials will be the fact that the line of financial 
policy with which his name is identified has proved to be 
in accord with the direction of political and industrial evo- 

10 



lution, and that his fundamental conception in the tariff act 
of 1861 has remained undisturbed as the corner-stone of all 
oiu' subsequent revenue legislation. And, even if all that is 
alleged in criticism of the financial policy of the government 
from 1860 to 1900 should be admitted, it must still be recog- 
nized that that is a wonderful system which could stand the 
sti'ain and weakness of so great alleged defects and yet pro- 
duce such marvelous and almost magical results. This is 
not the time or the place to discuss that system or the 
correlated system of internal revenue. I merely note it as 
one of the gi'eat things from which Mr. Morrill's name and 
fame can never be separated. 

His connection with the adornment of the national Capital 
with great and worthy public buildings is no less direct, 
and, in some ways, quite as important as with those things 
which have just been mentioned. He was a prime mover 
in the completion of the Washington mommient, after more 
than a quarter of a century of neglect; in the erection of 
the stately and commodious buildings in which are housed 
the State, Navy and War Departments; in the practical 
reconstruction of the capitol building by a system of mar- 
ble terracing which has restored the west front to something 
like artistic propoi'tions ; * in having the old Hall of the 
House of Representatives set apart as a Statuary Hall, in 
which are gi-adually gathering, as the choice of the several 
States may dictate, the bronze and marble forms of those 
who have dared and suffered and achieved for the Republic, 
and whose silent lips will ever speak to the youth of the 
land lessons of loyalty and coiu-age and patriotism and 
faith and hope. But above and beyond all these, worthy 
as they were and ai-e, must be ranked his precious con- 
tribution to the land he loved in the erection cf a noble 
and beautiful home for the Congi-essional Library. It is a 

• Unless my memory is entirely at fault, Mr. Morrill stated to me while the work 
was in process that the conception and design of the marble terracing were to be 
credited to Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, but Mr. Morrill was iu a position where he 
eonid accept or reject the design, and was no less, of course, the sponsor for it 
before Congress. 

11 



strauge thing that a man, born and reared amid the sim- 
plest sm-roundings, who had probably never seen an impor- 
tant work of art until he had reached the age of middle 
manhood, should have had so distilled into his soul, by the 
contemplation of nature and by his silent communion with 
the best and greatest thought of the world as embalmed in 
the noblest literature, that fine artistic sense which led him 
to idealize the Republic, and then to strive to have that 
ideal realized in enduring architecture. To his thinking, 
nothing was too good, or noble, or refined, or beautiful 
to represent the best impulses and aspirations of that great 
democracy whose heart he knew, whose language he spoke, 
and in whose future he had an immeasurable faith. 

It was a fitting climax to all this that his very last 
speech in the Senate should have been a plea for the erec- 
tion, on the square facing that where the Congressional 
Library stands, of a building that should be in like manner 
the home of the Supreme Court of the United States, and 
in keeping with the serene and lofty part which that match- 
less institution plays as the balance wheel of our great polit- 
ical system. 

But great and far-reaching as were the measures already 
named, it seems certain from our present point of view that 
Mr. Morrill's largest fame will forever be identified with the 
measures which he devised and carried to a successful 
issue, for the establishment and maintenance of a great 
system of institutions of Higher Education, to be aided by 
the United States, organized and controlled by the indi- 
vidual States, and fitted in as an integral part of the whole 
scheme of public instruction. To a subject which has been 
discussed so much and from so many points of view, I can 
hope to contribute very little that is new, and it covers so 
wide a field, both theoretical and practical, that the present 
occasion permits only a bare outline of suggestion on the 
most salient points. 

The law which now stands on the statute books of the 
United States was approved by Abraham Lincoln on the 

12 



second day of July, 1862. That act of the President was- 
the cuhnination of a struggle which had been actively 
maintained by Mr. Morrill for neai'ly five years. He intro- 
duced his first bill in the House of Representatives on the 
14th of December, 1857, just at the beginning of his second/ 
term in Congress. The bill was held under consideration 
by the Committee for a period of four months, and on the 
15th of April, 1858, was reported to the House with an 
unfavorable recommendation, accompanied with majority 
and minority reports setting forth the respective gi'ounds of 
opposition and of supjaort. Five days later, Mr. Morrill 
took the floor in support of the bill. His argument was 
based upon the broadest grounds of public policy, main- 
taining that the public lands, being a common fund for the 
benefit of all parts of the country, should be so utilized as to 
promote the welfare of all sections in due proportion; that 
Congi-ess had used a portion of the first public lands that 
came under its control in the Northwest Territory for the 
promotion of primary and university education, and had 
repeated similar legislation in favor of every state after- 
wards admitted to the Union ; that this policy was too well 
established to admit of opposition on constitutional gi'ounds, 
and that no legislation could more directly advance the inter- 
ests of the gi-eat masses of the people than by providing 
means for bringing the new discoveries of science to the aid 
of agriculture and the other industries of life. His speech 
was earnest, elevated, persuasive, and weighty, and though 
his views were strongly antagonized at every point, in a 
House in which he and his party were in the minority, he 
succeeded at last in securing the passage of the bill (April 
20, 1858), by the narrow margin of 105 to 100 votes. 

An attempt was made to bring up the bill in the Senate 
at the beginning of the following session, but the antago- 
nism was so powerful and determined that the measi;re was 
held back until the 1st of February, 1859. An uncompro- 
mising opposition to its passage was led by Senators Pugh, 
of Ohio; Clay, of Alabama; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; 

13 



Rice, of Minnesota, and Mason, of Virginia — an array, at 
that time, of powerful names. The last named Senator 
denounced it as the attempt to inaugurate a new policy, 
as "one of the most extraordinary engines of mischief" 
that he could conceive as originating in the Senate, as a 
"visionary project" unworthy of notice. Clay, of Alabama, 
characterized it as "one of the most monstrous, iniquitous 
and dangerous measures which had ever been submitted to 
Congress;" as a delusive attempt to do an impracticable, if 
not an impossible thing. But his principal opposition was 
based upon the argument that the bill was a direct violation 
of the rights of the States and an attempt to secure control 
of their most important interests through the agency of an 
educational system. Now, even after this short interval of 
years, his language has a musty flavor of antiquity. Let 
me quote a single brief passage: "The Federal Govern- 
ment," he said, "is the creature of the States and is 
dependent upon them for its organization and operation. 
All its powers are subordinate to the States from whom 
they are derived. The States are in no wise dependent on 
the Federal Government for their operation, organization, 
support or maintenance. I stand as an embassador from 
a sovereign State, no more subject to the control of the 
Federal Government, except in a few instances provided in 
the Constitution, than any foreign and independent State. 
This bill treats the States as agents instead of principals, 
as creatures instead of creators, and proposes to give them 
their own property and direct them how to use it," — and 
much more to the same effect. Senator Davis, of Missis- 
sippi, confined his attention almost wholly to the consti- 
tutional argument, at the same time declaring that the 
proposed legislation was unnecessary and could produce no 
good results. Senator Pugh, of Alabama, expressed the 
belief that an Agricultural College woiUd never be estab- 
lished under this bill. Senator Rice, of Minnesota, said 
that he "looked upon the success of this measure as bring- 
ing a slow, lingering death to Minnesota." Senator Wade, 

14 



of Ohio, was its principal champion; and, after every 
expedient of opposition and delay and denunciation had 
been exhausted, the bill was finally passed (February 2, 
1859), with some amendments, by the narrow margin of 
thi-ee votes, — the vote standing 25 to 22. The House 
promptly concurred in the amendments and the bill was 
transmitted to President Buchanan, who vetoed it, Febru- 
ary 16, 1859, on the two-fold gi'ound that the Government 
was too poor to make the proposed donation, and that the 
bill was unconstitutional. 

There is no evidence, so far as I have seen, that the 
failure of this first attempt was to Mr. Morrill a source 
of discouragement or hesitation. He saw, of course, that 
it would be useless, even if it were possible, to secure 
the passage of the bill a second time during President 
Buchanan's term, and accordingly he made no attempt, so 
far as I am aware, to introduce it during the following Con- 
gi-ess— March 4, 1859, to March 4, 1861 — but on December 
16, 1861, directly after the assembling of the first regular 
session of the new Congi-ess, he introduced the bill a second 
time in the House of Representatives. 

In the meantime, gi-eat events had been happening. 
When the first bill was introduced, the country was in a 
state of profound peace, except that political antagonism 
had become sharply defined, and thoughtful men every- 
where beheld the portents of a coming struggle for political 
supremacy between the North and the South, though very 
few looked for physical violence, much less war. When 
the second bill was introduced, war was in actual progi'ess. 
The southern States had passed ordinances of secession, 
formed a Confederacy with the final assent of an overwhelm- 
ing majority of the people of the seceding States, taken 
possession of nearly all United States property within their 
limits, organized a strong central Government, placed 
armies in the field, and won repeated successes in their 
encounters with the army of the United States. The South 
expected, a great part of Europe believed, and many in the 

15 



North feared that the Confederacy would succeed in estab- 
lishing its own independence on the ruins of a shattered 
Union. A special session of Congress, during the summer 
of 1861, had provided men and money for the maintenance 
of the Union, and when Congress assembled in regular 
session in December the minds of men were filled with 
nothing but the pending struggle and the means of bring- 
ing it to a successful issue. It is highly characteristic of 
the sobriety and patience and tenacity and serenity of Mr. 
Morrill's intellectual processes, that at such a time he 
should turn aside from the consideration of measures relat- 
ing to the prosecution of war and calmly perfect his great 
measm-e for the promotion of popular education. It was 
also an act of faith and a prophecy. To his mind, there 
was no doubt about the issue of the struggle; and, even if 
his confidence in the perpetuity of the Union should finally 
prove mistaken, he still knew that no measure could more 
surely repair the ravages of war and safeguard the future 
than the one which had so much and for so long a time 
absorbed his thought. It may be inferred, however, from 
the meager notices in the Congressional Globe that Mr. 
Morrill found it impracticable, amid so many other matters 
of urgent and instant necessity, to secure time for the con- 
sideration of his bill in the House; for, on the second of 
May, 1862 (nearly five months later), the same bill was 
introduced in the Senate by Senator Wade, of Ohio. The 
opposition to the second bill, in the Senate, was determined 
but unsuccessful. Senator Lane, of Kansas, declared that 
the measure would be "ruinous to Kansas," and that a more 
iniquitous bill had never been introduced in Congress. But 
after all discussion it finally passed the Senate (June 10) 
by a vote of 32 to 7. In the meantime (May 29) , the House 
bill had been reported negatively from the Committee on 
Public Lands, and on June 5, Mr. Morrill had unsuccessfully 
asked leave to introduce a substitute bill; but the Senate 
bill, having been transmitted to the House, was taken up 
(June 17) and passed by a vote of 90 to 25, after several 

16 



attempts at amendment and delay had been voted down. 
Otherwise than this, there was not a word of debate on the 
measm'e in the House. Mr. Morrill simply remarked that 
the measm-e was well understood, having been before Con- 
gress and the country for five years ; and he bore himself 
throughout as one who was sure not only of himself but of 
his support by the House. 

One of the most striking facts that appears in connection 
with the discussion of the two bills, in both House and Sen- 
ate, is that scarcely any one, except the author of the bill, 
showed any clear understanding of its real scope and mean- 
ing. Many of those who opposed the measure did so on 
alleged grounds which were plainly contradicted by the lan- 
guage of the bill itself; while those who spoke in support 
of it confined themselves almost entirely to correcting such 
misstatements. Nothing could better show how new was 
the field into which Mr. Morrill was urging Congi-ess to 
enter than the course of these discussions. It is easy for 
us, at a distance of forty years and with full knowledge of 
the revolution that has during that time taken place in the 
whole spu'it and method of higher education, to look back 
with something of amusement and surprise at the crudeness 
of opinion then displayed; but it should be borne in mind 
that both the direction of congressional legislation proposed 
by Mr. Morrill, and the theory of education involved in his 
bill, were new not only to Congress, but to the country at 
large. There were then in the United States less than half 
a dozen institutions, outside of West Point and Annapolis, 
where young men could obtain advanced instruction in civil 
engineering, while electrical engineering was absolutely un- 
known, and mechanical and mining engineering were taught 
only through a course of practical apprenticeship. The 
whole field of physics had hai'dly been touched except on 
the theoretical side, and such a thing as a physical labora-- 
tory did not then, I believe, exist in the United States. 
With respect to the natural sciences, the case was hardly 
different. A few eminent names like Silliman, in chemis- 

17 



try; Dana aud Hitchcock, in geology; Gray, in botany; 
Agassiz, in zoology, had created interest in those particular 
subjects, but there was not an institution in the country, 
even those with which these distinguished scholars were 
connected, in which these subjects were not relegated to a 
minor and comparatively incidental position. Even Agas- 
siz, when in 1848 he accepted an appointment in Harvard 
College, took the two chairs of zoology and geology. 

Two powerful influences were working for a change. 
The first was the fact that scientific inquiry was beginning 
to reveal to the world its marvelous possibilities, and the 
other was a kind of blind, groping instinct in the popular 
mind, leading to the conviction that scientific knowledge 
ought in some way to be made more useful to the daily occu- 
pations of life than had pre\'iously been thought possible, 
and that the educational system of the country ought to 
contribute more dii-ectly to that end than it was then doing. 
Dr. True has published a very interesting account of several 
early attempts to work out this idea, and Mr. Morrill was in 
close communication with men who had caught the impulse 
of it. But neither colleges, nor teachers, nor appliances, 
nor methods of instruction were ready for this new demand. 
It is interesting to note that the great measure of relief pro- 
vided by Congress was devised by a man who had had no 
advantages of collegiate or other higher education, and thus 
was free from the narrowness and prejudices which such an 
education sometimes produces; while, on the other hand, 
he was both by sympathy and by training a man of the 
people, thinking their thoughts, moved by their emotions, 
and putting into clear and effective speech what they dimly 
and vaguely felt. 

Aside from the administrative provisions of his bill, the 
often quoted words which declai-ed its controlling purpose 
were practical enough to answer immediate needs, novel 
enough to open a tempting field of educational activity and 
broad enough to cover the widest possible range of future 
growth. Mr. Morrill once assured me, in answer to an 

18 



inquiry, tliat the language was his own, and familiar as it 
is I ma J' be permitted to quote it here. 

After pro\'iding for the investment of the proceeds of the 
sales of the lands. Section 4 of the Act declares that the 
money so invested "shall constitute a perpetual fund," 
that this fund shall remain "forever undiminished," that 
the interest on this fund shall be "inviolably appropriated, 
by each state which may take and claim the benefit of this 
Act, to the endowment, support, and maintenance of at 
least one College where the leading object shall be, without 
excluding other scientific and classical studies, and includ- 
ing military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as 
are related to agi'iculture and the mechanic arts, in such 
manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively pre- 
scribe, in order to promote the libei'al and practical educa- 
tion of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and 
professions in life." 

Agriculture was then almost the only gi'eat industry of 
the country, and not unnaturally the congi'essional mind 
and the popular mind caught first at the idea of "agricul- 
tui'al" colleges and " agi'icultural " education as the subjects 
chiefly contemplated by the bill; but Senator Mon-ill him- 
self, on repeated occasions, public and private, stated the 
true intent and object of the law, in language that leaves 
no room for doubt or question. At one time he said: 

"It is perhaps needless to say that these Colleges were 
not established or endowed for the sole purpose of teaching 
agriculture. Their object was to give an opportunity for 
those engaged in industrial pursuits to obtain some knowl- 
edge of the practical sciences related to agriculture and 
the mechanic arts; such as thej' could not then obtain 
at most of our institutions called classical Colleges, where 
the languages, Greek and Latin, French and German, 
absorbed perhaps two -thirds of all the time of the students 
while in college. 

"But it never was intended to force the boys of farmers 
going into these institutions so to study that they should 
all come out farmers. It was merely intended to give 

19 



them an opportunity to do so, and to do so with advantage 
if they saw fit. 

"Obviously, not manual but intellectual instruction was 
the paramount object. It was not provided that agricul- 
tural labor in the field should be practically taught any 
more than the mechanical trade of a carpenter or black- 
smith should be taught. Secondly, it was a liberal educa- 
tion that was proposed. Classical studies were not to be 
excluded, and, therefore, must be included. The act of 
1862 proposed a system of broad education by Colleges, not 
limited to a superficial and dwarfed training such as might 
be had at an industrial school, nor a mere manual train- 
ing such as might be supplied by a foreman of a workshop 
or by a foreman of an experimental farm. If any would 
have only a school with equal scraps of labor and of in- 
struction, or something other than a College, they would 
not obey the national law. Experience in manual labor, in 
the handling of tools and implements, is not to be dispar- 
aged; in the proper time and place it is most essential, and 
generally something of this may be obtained either before 
or after the college term, but should not largely interfere 
with the precious time required for a definite amount of 
scientific and literary culture, which all eai'nest students 
are apt to find far too limited." 

So clear was Mr. MorrUl's view on this point that in 
the title of the bill that he introduced December 15, 1873, 
he called the institutions "National Colleges for the -ad- 
vancement of general scientific and industrial education," 
and he used to say that the name "Agricultural Colleges" 
would never have been applied to the institutions except 
that it had happened to suit the casual convenience of an 
index clerk. 

At the risk of repeating what is already familiar, permit 
me to call attention to the cumulative marshaling of thought 
in the portion of the law just quoted. Each State is required 
to bind itself to maintain at least one "College," a term at 
that time applied to a well-known type of institution which 
provided a four years' course of liberal education in certain 
well-defined groups of studies. In keeping with this funda- 
mental idea, the new Colleges were to make it their "leading 

20 



object" to teach "branches of learning," and, more specifi- 
cally, such branches "as are related to agriculture and the 
mechanic arts." If the language of the law had stopped at 
that point it would have been sufficient to cover all that has 
since been done or can in the future be done by the insti- 
tutions thereby established ; for, what branches of learning 
can be conceived which are not "related" to agriculture and 
the mechanic arts ? Certainly every branch of mathematical, 
physical and natural science is directly so related, and there 
is not another branch of science known to man which is not 
in turn related to, and in most cases essential to, the mas- 
tery of the gi-eat fields of experimental science. But if the 
language of the enactment had stopped at that point it 
would have fallen far short of the author's intent, and 
would have been liable to the misconception of providing 
only for theoretical instruction in the branches of knowl- 
edge named, in the same manner as the then existing col- 
leges were chiefly doing. Accoi-dingly, these "branches of 
learning" are to be taught in such a manner as to promote 
a "practical" as well as a liberal education. 

It was the emphasis laid upon the practical element in 
education which gave its distinctive character to Mr. 
Morrill's plan, and this education, at once "liberal" and 
"practical," was to be provided for the "industrial classes;" 
meaning by that, not to suggest a gradation of rank or 
classes among the gi-eat body of the people, but merely to 
designate all those who were engaged in pursuits other than 
such as alone were then called professional; viz., law, 
medicine, and theologj-. But even this did not fill the 
measure of Mr. Morrill's thought. He did not aim to 
restrict the non-professional classes (as just defined) to a 
single field of learning, or to subject them to a single form 
or type of education. Other scientific studies than those 
related to agi-iculture and the mechanic arts wore not to be 
excluded, the ancient classics were not to be exclude'd, and 
the new Colleges were so to cover the whole field of ancient 
and modern learning as to fit their students for "the several 

21 



pursuits and professions in life." Mr. Morrill's purpose 
was, in short, to bring all the resources of modern science 
into direct relation to modern industries, and to emancipate 
aspiring and talented youth from the necessity of patroniz- 
ing only one type of College and entering only one restricted 
class of professions. This "practical" aim was a definite 
foreshadowing of what is now known as the laboratory 
method, which is coming to be everywhere recognized as 
absolutely indispensable to the best teaching of every 
branch of science, whether pure or applied, and to the wide- 
spread establishment of which the land grant Colleges have 
powerfully contributed. 

It may well be doubted whether the States that accepted 
the congressional gi-ant had any well-defined conception of 
what it meant. On its face, it was merely a contribution 
toward the establishment of a kind of College of which the 
need was already widely felt; but it was, in fact and in its 
consequences, much more than that. Every State accepted 
the grant on the conditions specified by Congress, and, in 
doing so, entered into a contract obligation with the United 
States to make a College a part of its system of public 
education. I find no evidence that even Mr. Morrill per- 
ceived the full significance of this fact: but the movement 
was in reality, though unconsciously, the most important 
step yet taken toward the realization of that great idea 
which Jefferson had conceived and to which he devoted 
many years of his life— of a school system in every State, 
beginning with the primary schools and reaching by regular 
gradations up to a State University, and through the State 
universities to a National University — all to be non- 
sectarian, scientific in aim and method, and supported by 
public taxation. 

The success of the new institutions was not everywhere 
equal, nor was it secured in any State without a struggle. 
They were, in fact, entering a field of education that was 
practically a terra incognita. They were required to teach 
the leading branches of experimental science, natural and 



physical, without proper buildings, equipment or apparatus, 
and, above all, without the possibility of obtaining in the 
United States, at that time, men enough properly trained to 
fill the newly established chairs. President Gilman of 
Johns Hopkins, then a professor in Yale College, pointed 
out in an article in the "North American Review" that one 
of the most serious obstacles to these institutions at the outset 
would be found in the lack of trained teachers, a lack which 
happily no longer exists and which the institutions them- 
selves have done much to supply. Another obstacle came 
from the antagonism of Colleges and so-called Universities 
already established; and theii- antagonism, supported by a 
powerful body of opinion, forced upon the public mind a 
consideration of the whole question of the proper function 
of the government, whether national or state, in respect to 
the support of higher education. It would probably be too 
much to say that the question has yet received a final settle- 
ment, but there is abundant evidence furnished by the 
growth of these institutions and the support given to them 
by the public that the question is well on the way toward 
solution, and in the direction outlined by Jefferson and 
successfully entered upon by Morrill. 

Public education at public cost is not maintained for the 
sake of the individual, but for the sake of the State, the 
collective whole. If it is true, as Washington said, that, 
"in proportion as the institutions of Government reflect 
public opinion, it is essential that that opinion be edu- 
cated," it is also true that the education must vary in 
accordance with varying conditions ol public life and the 
changing evolution of public instituti(>ns. When the busi- 
ness of government was simple and confined to but few 
objects, an elementary education may have been sufficient 
to prepare the masses of men for the intelligent discharge 
of the duties of citizenship; but when that business becomes 
highly complex, as in our own time, and has to deal not 
only with the greatest national interests, but with matters 
of world-wide concern, then it becomes indispensable to the 



23 



welfare of the State that the highest attainable education 
shall be placed within the reach of every youth who has the 
ambition, the energy and the intellectual ability to acquire 
it. Mr. Morrill and the generation that accepted his plan 
builded better than they knew; and in their action I see the 
sure instinct of a great Democracy working out the high- 
est law of self-preservation. The opposition to these new 
institutions was, in fact, based on the same theory and 
supported by the same arguments as have been used in 
almost every State against the establishment of common 
schools at public expense, against coimty superintenden- 
cies, against normal schools and high schools, against cen- 
tral control and against every other proposed scheme for 
improving them; but the cause of public education, in all 
its branches, has steadily advanced in spite of every form 
of opposition, and the public mind has at last fairly gi-asped 
the principle that there is no logical stopping place between 
a public support of elementary education and a public sup- 
port of the highest University education. 

Mr. Morrill never lost his active interest in the welfare 
of the institutions that had been founded by his instrumen- 
tality, and members of this Association, who remember his 
appearance before it at one session of its last convention in 
Washington, will never forget the mingled pride and diffi- 
dence with which he expressed his gratification in what 
these institutions had done and were doing and promised to 
do, and especially the touching note of personal affection 
with which he gi'eeted the members as they thronged around 
him to grasp his hand. He was profoundly and unaffectedly 
happy in the visible fruits of his accomplished work, far 
surpassing, as he said, his fondest hopes. 

It would be an interesting task, but one requiring more 
leisure than I have been able to command, to follow out 
step by step the evidences of his watchful care over their 
interests after they were once established. During the 
winter of 1872-73 the present distinguished senior Senator 
from Massachusetts, then a member of the House, was veiy 

24 



\ 



earnestly engaged in pushing a measure for the establish- 
ment of a permanent educational fund, from the proceeds 
of the sales of the public lands, which should be applied 
directly to the maintenance of public schools throughout the 
United States — the distribution to be made partly on the 
basis of illiteracy and partly on the basis of population. 
Senator Morrill at the same time had equally at heart the 
establishment of a permanent educational fund from the 
same source, the proceeds of which should be applied to 
the further maintenance of the Land Grant Colleges of 1862. 
The antagonism between these two measures, each propos- 
ing for the time being to absorb the entire proceeds of the 
sale of public lands, was finally reconciled by an agreement 
between the supporters of each to appropriate one -half of 
such proceeds to each of the objects named, and the two 
bills were modified accordingly; a limit of $50,000 a year 
for each State being placed upon the amount of the College 
income, the common school fund remaining indefinite. The 
two bills, as thus modified, had the active support of a very 
lai'ge majority in each House, but were opposed with great 
earnestness by some of the ablest Senators then in Congress, 
and both failed of final passage through the inaction of a 
Committee of Conference which had been appointed to 
reconcile the differences between the two Houses. 

In December, 1873, Senator Morrill introduced a bill 
(prepared by others, but entirely acceptable to himself) 
which combined the essential features of the two bills just 
named; but he did not find the conditions favorable for 
pressing it to a passage. Mr. Hoar, in the meantime, had 
reintroduced his bill in the House, and on the second day 
of February, 1874, the House, on the motion of Mr. James 
Monroe, then a professor in Oberlin College and a member 
of the House, adopted a resolution instructing the Com- 
mittee on Education and Labor "to inquire into the condi- 
tion and management of the agricultural and other colleges 
which have received grants from the United States under 
the Act of July 3, 1862." Mr. Monroe had been an earnest 

25 



opponent of the College Bill in the previous session, and this 
movement was looked upon by the friends of the Colleges 
as distinctly hostile, or, at best, as intended to delay any 
legislation in their behalf. The committee prepared and 
sent to all the Colleges a long list of questions covering 
every possible phase of their work and history, and many 
of them impossible of a definite answer for the reason that 
they seemed to assume a like condition of things in every 
State, or at least varying conditions that could be reduced 
to the same statistical standai'd. It was agreed among the 
Colleges, however, through some correspondence, that all 
should make the fullest and frankest answers that were 
possible under the circumstances, and this was finally done 
by all except two — Kansas and Florida. 

On the 13th of January, 1875, Mr. Monroe presented 
the Report of the Committee (Report No. 57, 43d Cong., 
2d Sess.j. 

The Report avowedly refrains from discussing all ques- 
tions of general policy involved in the establishment of 
these institutions, and expresses gi'atification at the desire 
shown by most of them, not only to furnish the facts 
sought for, but to aid the committee by suggestions as to 
the best method of accomplishing its object. It then pro- 
ceeds to summarize the facts ascertained respecting the sale 
of lands and land scrip, the investment of the proceeds 
in the several States, the financial management of the fund, 
the amount of income from it and the educational results. 
The institutions themselves are described as being "in a 
state of formation," some States having not yet made pro- 
vision for the establishment of Colleges, and others but 
recently— only six in all having been in operation prior to 
1865. The Report concludes, therefore, that it was then 
"too early to obtain intelligent answers" to the questions 
asked, and adds that, while "there is nothing in the results 
thus far attained that can be called discouraging ... a 
considerable number of the Colleges have done work which 
requires no apology, and a few of those earliest organized 

26 



have already found time to take high rank among the insti- 
tutions of the land." 

"It must be added," continues the Report, "that the re- 
ports sent from these Colleges reveal, in many cases, a cer- 
tain fi-esh interest and spirit of youth, a new enthusiasm, 
which when intelligent and enduring is one of the best 
prophecies of success. Strong evidence is afforded of the 
power of these institutions to establish sympathetic relations 
between themselves and the communities in which they are 
placed, in the fact that they have already received in appro- 
priations from States and in donations from towns, counties 
and private individuals an amount almost equal, in the 
aggi'egate, to the whole bounty of the Government."* 

It seemed proper to call attention to this Report, because 
it was the first and the last movement in Congress which 
has ever betrayed the slightest distrust of the work that was 
being done by these institutions, and it is gratifying to add 
that Mr. Monroe himself was so convinced by his inquiry 
that he not onlj' made his Report, as we have seen, a strong 
justification of them and their work, but became and re- 
mained ever after one of their steadfast friends. 

During the two years next succeeding, political excite- 
ment ran so high, in Congress and out, that Senator Morrill 
appeared to think it inexpedient to press for any further 
legislation in behalf of the Colleges. He had the subject 
continually before his mind, made numerous minor modifi- 
cations of the bill which he had introduced in December, 
1873, and there was never a day, I think, when he was not 
prepared to introduce a bill if there had seemed any pros- 
pect of securing time for its consideration. In March, 1877, 
Senator Sherman having resigned his seat to accept a place 
in the cabinet of President Hayes, Senator Morrill suc- 
ceeded him as chairman of the Finance Committee and for 
a time his principal attention was absorbed in that direc- 
tion. This of itself would jirobably have prevented him, 
for the time being, from undertaking further active efforts 

•For the condition of the colleges in thia respect in 1899, see Appendix. 



in behalf of the Colleges, bixt a more controlling reason lay 
in the fact that Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, who suc- 
ceeded him as chairman of the Committee on Education, 
devoted himself with great earnestness and persistence to 
an attempt to secure a large appropriation for the support 
of common schools. It was only after this measure had 
repeatedly failed of passage that Senator Morrill (with 
Senator Blair^s hearty concurrence) took up again his 
favorite subject and secured the passage of the Act of 1890, 
as supplementary to his original Act of 1862. This Act is 
of so recent enactment and operation that it is suflQcient 
merely to refer to it in this connection. It was a fitting cul- 
mination of Senator Morrill's work for public education. 
Its helpful and stimulating influence has been felt in every 
State, and the equal distribution under it has done much to 
correct the inequalities of the distribution of land scrip 
under the Act of 1862.* 

Probably Mr. Morrill's last act in this connection was 
the introduction (March 17, 1898) of a bill providing that 
whenever the proceeds of the- sales of public lands should 
be less "than is required by the terms of the Act aforesaid 
(the Act of 1890) to be paid to each of the several states, 
any deficiency shall be paid from any money in the treasury 
not otherwise appropriated." 

Mr. Morrill did not live to see this bill become a law, 
but a like provision has since been made by act of Con- 
gress, and the institutions which Mr. Morrill established in 
1862 are now, in 1900, securely grounded on the inviolable 
faith of the United States. Few men in public life find 
their own ideals realized or their best purposes embodied 
in legislation, or in permanent institutions; but Senator 
Morrill, at the close of his career, could look back upon 
a great body of noble results as enduring as the Republic. 

This outline sketch of Senator Morrill's work would be 



*By the Act of 18C2, 30,000 acres were donated to each State for each Seniitor and 
Representative in Congress to which it was entitled. By the Act of 1S90, each State 
receives an equal appropriation. 

28 



incomplete without a brief statement respecting the growth 
and the present status of the Land Grant Colleges. This topic 
in itself would furnish abundant material for a crowded hour. 
At present I must confine myself to the bare mention of a 
few characteristic facts. It should be borne in mind that 
the Act of 1862 did not directly donate the lands to the 
States, but offered them to the legislative acceptance of the 
States on certain clearly specified and stringent conditions. 
The most significant fact, and probably the most unex- 
pected, is the full and liberal response of state and terri- 
torial governments, and, in some cases, communities and 
individuals, to the initial action of Congi-ess. 

The land granted to the States by the Act of 1862 
amounted to somewhat more than ten million acres, which 
has thus far produced a permanent fund of $10,262,944, 
with lands still unsold of the estimated value of $4,062,- 
850.30; the entire proceeds being, in round numbers, some- 
what over fourteen and a quarter millions. To this have 
been added other land grant funds amounting to $1,441,- 
577.38; other permanent funds, $14,442,194.25; farms and 
grounds, $5,543,108.91; buildings, $16,274,000.53; appa- 
ratus, $1,955,859.21; machinery, $1,373,696.75; libraries, 
$1,854,942.21; miscellaneous equipment, $1,997,690.07, 
making a grand total of permanent plant of the value of 
$58,944,137.61. The additions to the permanent endow- 
ment and equipment in 1899 amounted to $2,365,152.43. 

On this basis sixty-four institutions have been estab- 
lished. In 1899 they had a total of 35,956 students, with 
professors and instructors aggi-egating 2,893 persons, and 
with a total income of $5,994,037.61, exclusive of the sums 
received from the United States for Agricultural Experi- 
ment Stations. Of this amount $624,072.88 was received 
as interest on the land grant of 1862 and $1,120,778.96 
under the Act of 1890, thiis leaving to them an income of 
$4,248,585.77, or more than two-thirds of the whole, from 
other sources than grants of the United States. During the 
single year 1899, the States and Territories appropriated 

29 



for the maintenance and improvement of the Land Grant 
Colleges no less than $2,287,917.98. 

These figures furnish most striking and conclusive evi- 
dence that the policy of Congress, begun by the Act of 
1862 and continued by the Act of 1890, has met a great 
public need, and that, instead of encouraging inaction or 
indifference on the part of the States, it has, on the con- 
trary, stimulated them to a degree of activity far in advance 
of that of Congress. But this array of material strength 
tells only the lesser part of their story. In the range and 
quality of their scholarship, in their combination of the 
practical and experimental with the theoretical, in their 
adjustment to the conditions of public education in their 
several States, in their responsiveness to public needs and 
the best public opinion, they occupy a distinctive position 
and are doing a work which has profoundly affected the 
educational life of the country. I confidently believe that, 
with a charter broad enough to cover the whole range of 
learning, the future of higher education in this country 
belongs largely to these Colleges, and to the influences that 
they have created and must continue to create. 

The accomplished work bespeaks the man. As these 
institutions typify American education, so Mr. Morrill in 
his person and character typified an almost ideal American 
citizenship. He represented more than most men in public 
life those deep and silent forces that are the real strength of 
the Republic — nay, they are the Republic: they are its only 
promise and potency of continued existence. They come 
from the sober thought of men and women who listen to the 
inner voices of conscience and duty and obey in their lives 
the sovereign law of rectitude — the steadfast souls who do 
the daily work of the world, not with a parade of virtue or 
an air of martyrdom, but with a cheerful courage and 
patience and faith because they know no other call than 
the call of duty; because, as Luther said, they "can do 
no other." They are the men and women who support 
churches and schools and charities and cherish the sahcti- 

30 



ties of home. They are the men of affairs who understand 
that there is no great or permanent or worthy success 
in business life except as it is built on a foundation of 
absolute truthfulness and absolute integi-ity, and that the 
standards of public integrity and private integrity are the 
same. They are the citizens whose judgments remain un- 
disturbed amid the clamorous brawl of self-seeking dema- 
gogues and who then turn aside to swell that " silent " vote 
that often upsets all political calculations. They are the 
sane and honest masses of the people, who have thus far in 
our history proved equal to every emergency and risen to 
the full height of eveiy great crisis. 

It was the source at once of Mr. Morrill's strength and 
of his limitations in some directions, that in his own person 
he stood for and tj'pified so much of these characteristics 
of "the plain people." He was peculiarly happy in the State 
he represented: a sober, energetic, thrifty people — loyal 
to their State, their Country and their God; patrons of 
schools and colleges and churches; quick to recognize 
merit in their public men and wise to continue them long 
in the public service — the best type, in short, of a true 
American citizenship — and Senator Morrill was simply one 
among them. He was of them in his origin, in his charac- 
ter, in his training, in his cast of mind, in his life-long 
habits of action : but he was of them at their best, and for 
that reason his career will, for all coming time, set a stand- 
ard which every youth may hopefully strive to reach, but 
which few will surpass. The institutions that he established 
will live as long as the Republic lives. They will increase 
in wealth and influence and piiblic favor; but their most 
precious possession and their perennial source of power over 
the young manhood and womanhood of America will be 
found in the example of the life and character of their 
founder, Justin S. Morrill. 



31 



APPENDIX 



STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES LAND GRANT COLLEGES, 
YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1899 



Condensed from statements jmblished by the United States Department of AgHcuUvre. 



States and 
Territories. 



Value of Land 

Grant Sold and 

Unsold. 



Value of Grounds, t!.„.„ i •„ 

Buildings , ^^«*^ ^^^^SJ'I^' 

and Equipment ^^^'^^ t«>^ ^^^S-Q, 



Total Income 
1898-9. 



Alabama ... 

Arizona 

Arkansas • ■ ■ . 
California . . . . 

Colorado 

Connecticut . . • 
Delaware .... 

Florida 

Georgia 

Idaho 

Illinois 

Indiana 

Iowa 

Kansas 

Kentucky 

Louisiana 

Maine 

Maryland 

Massachusetts. 

Michigan 

Minnesota 

Mississippi 

Missouri 

Montana 

Nebraska 

Nevada 

New Hampshire 
New Jersey .... 
New Mexico . . . 

New York 

North Carolina 
North Dakota . . 

Ohio 

Oklahoma 

Oregon 

Pennsylvania . . 
Rhode Island . j 
South Carolina ' 
South Dakota. 
Tennessee .... 

Te.xas 

Utah 

Vermont 

Virginia 

Washington . . 
West Virginia. 
Wisconsin . . . 
Wyoming 



$253,500 00 



752,155 65 

218,612 09 

135,000 00 

83,000 00 

251,000 00 
900,000 00 
581,342 99 
340,000 00 
628,329 46 
504,548 03 
185,925 00 

118,300 00 

115,943 00 

219,000 00 

1,005,614 98 

567,992 84 

211,950 00 

437,353 99 

225,000 00 

181,821 97 

93,000 00 

80,000 00 

116,000 00 

658,572 12 
125,000 00 
900,000 00 
524,176 30 

140,694 38 

427,290 50 

50,000 00 

95,900 00 

1,200,000 00 

396,000 00 

209,000 00 



135,500 00 
516,468 00 

90,000 00 
302,000 00 



$303,875 71 
139,406 92 
319,880 00 

2,097,664 84 
271,110 98 
94,050 00 
165,650 00 
109,283 77 
519,500 00 
178,000 00 

1,260,000 00 
701,500 00 
600,347 62 
437,909 25 
533,917 74 
82,216 00 

305.015 00 
141,000 00 

1,489,758 15 
259,610 20 

1,640,000 00 
347,195 98 

1,151,898 00 
168,000 00 

1,127,000 00 

231,409 67 

167,316 24 

466,500 00 

78,870 00 

2,989,344 15 
196,654 49 
152,000 00 

2,797,000 00 

74,600 00 

128,500 00 

874,000 00 

300,169 57 

474.016 00 
102,000 00 
276,500 00 
418,814 36 
212,608 96 
734,744 95 
969,801 31 
175,000 00 
450,500 00 

1,466,830 89 
152,455 00 



Totals $14,325,794 30 $58,944,137 61 

32 



$6,432 00 
11,996 13 
5,000 00 
244,090 64 
37,667 54 
15,000 00 

4,000 00 

10,000 66 
229,550 00 
68,158 34 
25,920 82 
10,728 37 
37,659 98 
10,000 00 
20,000 00 
23,000 00 
45,000 00 

157,162 27 
21,000 00 
80,725 00 
12,000 00 

213,750 00 

17,000 00 

5,500 00 

1,107 24 

35,000 00 

10,000 00 

27,700 00 

176,058 15 

8,300 00 
26,583 95 
43,416 25 
22,300 00 
74,000 00 

8,500 00 

40,100 00 

13,750 00 

6.000 00 

15,000 00 

11,985 19 

103,500 00 

282,000 00 

9,268 46 



$2,287,917 98 



$43,682 50 
38,382 74 
11,995 45 

459,884 79 
69,749 00 
55,810 00 
31,955 81 
40,627 35 
42,004 14 
34,000 00 

364,294 09 

140,047 22 
97,099 24 
67,294 62 
89,672 21 
22,687 42 
78,631 60 
87,864 20 

396,946 45 
88,037 22 

364,081 64 
57,930 21 

185,689 32 
38,500 00 

292,352 61 
53,522 25 
55,920 75 
52,252 60 
29,. 529 43 

676,797 69 
37,220 29 
54,820 91 

277,573 06 
33,871 13 
73,386 16 

115,679 73 
48,011 12 

108,062 00 
40,777 96 
62,150 04 

107,554 66 
45,302 61 
69,305 77 

227,675 57 
38,542 56 

139,646 00 

365,300 00 
33,728 36 



$5,994,037 61 



, Horaot Hcfarland Compang 

m. Phaaant PrInUry 

Harrlaburg, Panntylttanla 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



m 144 795 m 



